Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles Headline "THE CLASSIC CONCERTS" Los Angeles and New York

Live Nation's "The Classic Concerts" Welcomes Timeless Rock Legends

Nothing screams classic rock like the enduring musicality of Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles and other legends brought to us by Live Nation's "The Classic" concert set. These events present both east and west coast crowds an unforgettable summer opportunity to experience some of the biggest names in classic rock history set in two historic and beautiful stadium venues.

Sensibly entitled The Classic Concerts, Live Nation has sourced age-old favorites suitable for all generations, splitting each concert series into two days of rockin' performers. The Los Angeles performances are called The Classic West, and will take place at Dodger's Stadium over the weekend of July 15-16, while New York's series is titled The Classic East, and is set during the weekend of July 29-30.

Single ticket admission is good for both days of this innovative festival, featuring The Eagles, Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers on Saturday and Fleetwood Mac, Journey and Earth Wind & Fire on Sunday.  What better way to see some of the most well-loved and lasting musical acts from the last century than in the iconic stadiums that house the Los Angeles Dodgers and The New York Mets? Each venue will also offer delectable eats and drink from both local and international vendors, designed to offer visitors an authentic music festival experience.

Don't miss out on purchasing your ticket to this unforgetable event as tickets are sure to sell fast!
Tickets go on sale Friday, April 7th at 10am, TheClassic.com.

Review Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders Live in Uniondale April 6, 2017

Review: Stevie Nicks magical at Nassau Coliseum for '24 Karat Gold' tour
Uniondale - On April 6, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Stevie Nicks headlined the new Nassau Colisem, as part of her "24 Karat Gold Tour."
by Markos Papadatos
Digital Journal

Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders served as her opening act, and they were able to warm up the stage for Nicks.

Nicks opened her set with "Gold and Braid" and it was followed by "If Anyone Falls." Thank you. This is a night of storytelling," she said. "It's so much fun for me."

She told the audience the story behind "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," and brought back Chrissie Hynde on stage to sing the Tom Petty-penned tune as a duet with her, which was a nonchalant yet powerful collaboration. Nicks noted that thanks to success of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," it helped propel her Bella Donna album straight into the stratosphere.

For the follow-up song, "Belle Fleur," the stage was decorated in an elaborate set and a neat backdrop, as she brought her tambourine with her on stage and showcased her timeless outfit. She took the crowd on a trip down memory lane with "Gypsy" as a rain backdrop graced the stage.

She subsequently described "Wild Heart" as a song that was more crazy, while "Bella Donna" was more focused, and she delivered memorable versions of both songs. "Wild Heart" was an important song for Nicks since it proved to her that her solo career was not a fluke, and rightfully so.

One of the most poignant songs in the set was "New Orleans," which she wrote about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which has optimistic vibes to it.

The rock queen noted that the song "Starshine" originated in Tom Petty's basement, and she sang an upbeat and rocking version, which had that vintage Tom Petty touch to it.

After an outfit change, she took her fans on a vocal voyage to "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)," which had a neat orchestral arrangement to it, that was reminiscent of a scene in a Twilight film, featuring Nicks' expressive vocals. She noted that she wrote the song in 2009 at a time when she was super-disturbed with the Internet world. "At my age, I'm writing music just for me," she said, and the audience concurred with that statement, since Nicks proved that it is all about the quality of music.

One of the highlight moments of the night, and this journalist's personal favorite performance was "Stand Back," where she got the crowd on their feet. The best was when she did her signature spinning move midway through the song, which resonated well with the audience, garnering her a standing ovation.

After "Crying in the Night" and "If You Were My Love," she concluded her show with "Gold Dust Woman" and her Grammy-nominated "Edge of Seventeen." For her encore, Nicks performed two beloved Fleetwood Mac classics, "Rhiannon" and "Landslide."

The Verdict

Overall, Stevie Nicks gave Nassau Coliseum a nostalgic night of music to remember, which was a blend of her solo material, Fleetwood Mac songs and even newer songs that she had written. She proved to be one true song stylist, and was able to share her insights with her audience about the origins of some of her songs. The crowd was aware of the fact that they were in the presence of a rock and roll countess. Her "24 Karat Gold" tour stop at Nassau Coliseum earned an A rating.

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Charlottesville March 25, 2017

Stevie Nicks As Good as ‘Gold’ In Charlottesville
by Muktaru Jalloh
Commonwealthtimes

Currently on her second leg of the 24K Karat Gold Tour, legendary singer Stevie Nicks performed for a crowd of nearly 15,000 at University of Virginia Jean Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville on March 25.  

Known for her work with band Fleetwood Mac and her solo career, Nicks has been regarded by many pubs as the Queen of Rock & Roll, with more than 140 millions records sold and 8 Grammys. This tour is a celebration of her most recent album, the 2014 release of  “24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault.”

Originally scheduled for a start time of 7p.m., the venue announced last-minute show’s openers, The Pretenders, would not be performing due to illness. While some fans asked for refunds at ticket booths, many decided Nicks was still worth the night.

A predominantly older crowd, many came dressed to the nines with life-long fans opted to take a page out of their wardrobe from back in the day. Nicks, a mainstay of Rock & Roll music in the 1970s, was a major influence with her style and fashion as much as her music. Thus, many fans dressed in her likeness, sporting Nick’s’ trademark shawl fabrics, big hair and celestial pendants.

A little after 8 p.m., Nick’s’ band appeared on stage to roaring applause from the crowd. Once each band member was set, Nicks gracefully walked onstage and wasted no time getting the show started, opening with “Gold and Braid,” an unreleased song from her 1981 debut solo platinum-selling album, “Bella Donna.”

The album served as affirmation of her decision to leave the success of Fleetwood Mac and embark on her own career.  

After performing the song, Nicks spoke about the creation and legacy of the album, citing collaborators Tom Petty and Jimmy Lovine as instrumental to its success. She continued to perform carefully-selected songs from her early solo albums, including “If Anyone Falls” and“Stop Draggin”.

At certain parts of the night, Nicks chose to perform fan favorites from her work with Fleetwood Mac, performing “Gyspy” to a resounding response from the crowd. Like the album, the nearly three-hour-long highlighted various unreleased songs Nicks chose to perform for the first time.

For each song, she detailed its own unique background story and origin. To the audience’s pleasure, Nicks spoke with much candor and wit in her recollections. In addition, never-before-seen photos appeared on a large LCD screen behind her correlating with each story and song.

When she performed “Stand Back,” she spoke of her close friendship with Prince, who passed away last year. She detailed her first encounter with the legend, citing his purple camaro and his attire as personal memories that still stand out to her to  this day. Nicks revealed that the song was a play on Prince’s classic, “Little Red Corvette” and said that she feels his presence every time she performs the record.  

Nicks closed the set with her famous, “Edge of Seventeen” with her guitarist doing his best Jimi Hendrix impression during his solo. When the crowd pleaded that she sing one more, she gladly obliged performing “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” as encores.

An intriguing yet inspiring element to the show was the perspective in which Nicks spoke about her past and present. She spoke as someone who is at peace with her youth, prime and career. Most importantly, Nicks genuinely looked happy on stage to share these obscure songs that maybe one point in time she was too afraid to perform in the past. 

A show filled with nostalgia and remembrance, Nicks’s presence was also one of contentment and joy. With her voice as strong and cool as ever, Stevie is still as good as Gold.

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Baltimore March 26, 2017

Wild Heart: On Stevie Nicks and her dogged tenderness
Rebekah Kirkman
City Papers

At Royal Farms Arena a couple weeks ago, CP's Performing Arts Editor Maura Callahan and I are standing among a swarm of people who all look like vaguely different amalgamations of a certain type of person I have known throughout my life—people I grew up going to church with, people I worked for, the friends, parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts of my peers and myself. A lot of these people are disappointed: The Pretenders, who are supposed to open for Stevie Nicks, had to cancel because singer Chrissie Hynde is sick.

As we wait in line at will call to pick up our press passes, where everyone else is clamoring for a refund—because they had already seen Stevie Nicks a million times and Fleetwood Mac a million times, and what if she sings songs that they don't know so well, and they were really looking forward to hearing 'Back on the Chain Gang' again only this time a little more rough around the edges maybe—an angry white woman behind us says to a Royal Farms Arena worker who is trying to help her, "I know it's not your fault, but this really SUCKS!" It's a bummer to be around all these joyless folks—I was bummed to miss The Pretenders too—but I'm able to transcend my temporary discomfort: We're about to see Stevie Nicks live for the first time, instead of sitting at home watching old recordings on YouTube, which is what Maura and I usually do.

We get into our seats—to the right of the stage, kinda close to the floor seats, and sandwiched between two old-dad-like dudes, one of whom keeps creepily looking over and gesturing at Maura. Soon Stevie and her eight-piece backing band emerge onto the stage, and after a rousing performance of 'Gold and Braid,' she greets the audience and tells us what we've gotten ourselves into.

"It's going to be different than you've seen before," she says, fingering the thick black and silver tassels tied to her mic stand. "I just had to do something for myself." So she went back into her "gothic trunk of lost songs" and pulled some of her lesser known and unreleased songs she wrote throughout her nearly 50-year career as a solo artist, a member of Fleetwood Mac, and as one half of the pre-Fleetwood Mac duo Buckingham Nicks. And then she sequenced them for this tour with the crowd favorites, including 'Gold Dust Woman,' 'Edge of Seventeen,' and 'Landslide,' among others.

Her set is peppered with anecdotes about how certain songs and collaborations came to be. Her stories are lengthy and comprehensive, and it feels as if we're all her grandchildren, as Maura observes, and we ought to listen to her. The second best story is about Prince, who she met in the late '70s at a party. (The best one is about how her song 'Moonlight [A Vampire's Dream]' is "Twilight" fanfiction; Bella was "eclipsed" by Edward—and who hasn't felt that way in a relationship before, she asked. Ugh, you're right.) Stevie's initial meeting with Prince was pretty unremarkable—she told him he needed to talk more, and then she fluttered away. She didn't hear anything else about him until 1983, when she was in a car with her new husband Kim Anderson (who had introduced her to Prince at that party), and 'Little Red Corvette' came on the radio. She started riffing on it in her head while listening to it, and they pulled over so she could write it down. After recording the song in a Los Angeles studio, she said, "Does anyone know how to get in touch with Prince?" (when Stevie gets to this part in the story, Maura shouts "Oh my god, she's gonna do a seance.")

So she called up Prince, and he happened to be in town. He came to the studio decked out in purple and velvet, she recalls. She played the song for him, and he liked it, so he played some synthesizers and guitar. "And then he was like, 'Well I'm out of here, people to see, places to go.'" The song was 'Stand Back.'

For the whole set, with only a minor hiccup here or there, she and her band sound incredible. It doesn't matter that she doesn't really hit the high notes anymore; she's adapted, and her performance is graceful—the crowd goes nuts when she twirls around in her black drapey dress and beaded and tasseled shawls (there are several shawl changes throughout the set).

Her stories between songs craft a scene of furious dedication; how she built on the momentum of her past work to keep going and making more. After the success of her 1981 debut solo album, "Bella Donna," for example, she went back to make more music and tour with Fleetwood Mac, and then put out "The Wild Heart" two years later, as an almost manic response to her fear of becoming a one-hit-solo-record-wonder.

As she introduces 'Belle Fleur,' which was released in her 2014 album "24 Karat Gold," Stevie describes it as a song that "could be written by Chrissie Hynde or Stevie Nicks or any other girl in rock 'n' roll" in the 1970s—it's about how getting more famous and "successful" meant first-class tickets and shiny limousines, which she realized were both literally and figuratively carrying her away from the comforts of home, stability, love, and her idea of who she really was. "I missed my Toyota," she says.

"This is no ticket for dreamland/ A garden for fevers to grow in/ As I run through the door of the long black car," she sings on 'Belle Fleur.'

At the heart of some of these explorations and disillusioned views of fame is a woman working it out. "I have no fear, I have only love," she sings with dogged tenderness on 'Gypsy.' And that's where her music hits me, a young woman in my 20s who feels occasionally, almost melodramatically, lost and confused about who and where I am in my life. Maybe that's true for a lot of the women and girls present tonight—and it makes me feel vaguely hopeful and idealistic that there exists some kind of intergenerational knowledge that women have and can use to support and show up for each other.

All of my current troubles have layers, and they co-mingle with one another, but perhaps my most obvious one—the one that's certainly wrapped up in all of the others—is that I'm currently about six months into grieving my dad's death, which happened a few days after my 25th birthday (he would've been bummed for me that the Pretenders canceled, but would've been jealous that I got to see Stevie Nicks). I asked my mom recently if being in your mid-20s is supposed to feel like a second puberty (shout-out to Mitski, whose 2016 album "Puberty 2" I've had in constant rotation since it came out). My mom reminded me that she had already had two babies by the time she was in her mid-20s (she had me when she was in her late 20s), and she did what she thought she needed to do to make things good for me and my siblings. "I did, learned, regrouped, and did," she told me.

And that's a thread I pick up in much of Stevie's music: so many songs about women who are younger, older, wise, lost, and figuring it out all at the same time. And tonight, the teenage girl a couple rows in front of me wearing a sweater with a skull on it is having just as much fun dancing and singing along with her friends as the gray-haired older women in our row who joyously, drunkenly slur to one another, "It's 'Landslide!'" when guitarist Waddy Wachtel starts strumming his guitar.

And at 68 years old, Stevie Nicks is still figuring it out, too. In the very last song of the night which is, of course, 'Landslide,' which she wrote when she was 25 years old, she adjusts a line from the original: "And can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? Uh-uh, I don't know, oh, still don't know."

Review Stevie Nicks with The Pretenders April 2, 2017 - Newark, NJ

Review: Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders find 'lost songs'
Jay Lustig, Special to The Record
NorthJersey.com

Stevie Nicks brought her “dark gothic trunk of lost songs” with her to the Prudential Center in Newark on Sunday night. It wasn’t a literal chest, of course, but she used this phrase, several times, to refer to the little-known material that made up much of the setlist.

This show was part of Nicks’ 24 Karat Gold Tour, which follows the 2014 release of her album, “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault,” featuring new versions of previously unreleased songs she had written at various phases of her career. Nicks sang three of those songs (“Starshine,” “Belle Fleur” and “If You Were My Love”) in Newark, and built on the theme by also including rarities like “Crying in the Night” (from her 1973 album with Lindsey Buckingham, “Buckingham Nicks”) and “New Orleans” (her uplifting response to Hurricane Katrina, released on her 2011 album, “In Your Dreams”).

Nicks, 68, also talked a lot about the songs, especially the obscure ones, and told stories about what her life was like at the time they were written. As anyone who has heard her being interviewed knows, she’s a great raconteur — open and honest and always ready to delve into some fascinating tangent — and the stories made up a big portion of Sunday’s set. She was on stage for two hours and 20 minutes, and at least a half hour of that time was devoted to the stories.

There was still plenty of room in the show, of course, for hits, from both her solo career (“Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back”) and her albums with Fleetwood Mac (“Rhiannon,” “Gypsy”). She brought out Chrissie Hynde — who had opened the show with her band the Pretenders — to duet with her on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” “Landslide” was the low-key, soulful show-closer. “Gold Dust Woman” was stretched out into a cathartic epic, as was the “In Your Dreams” track, “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream).”

Nicks — who also performs at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on Thursday — was in good voice throughout, and her eight-piece band, anchored by the guitarist Waddy Wachtel (a friend and associate of Nicks since her Buckingham Nicks days), played flawlessly. Artful, intricately detailed video projections were used on many songs.

One of Nicks’ most memorable stories was about how hearing Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” on a car stereo inspired her to write “Stand Back,” and how she got Prince himself to play on the song. She also explained why the “long black car” in “Belle Fleur” symbolizes a relationship-destroying force, and how the upbeat “Starshine” came to be recorded, nearly 40 years ago, with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers — though it didn’t surface until “24 Karat Gold” simply because neither Nicks nor Petty was working on an album at the time.

Opening the show, the Pretenders began with two songs from their 2016 album “Alone” (“Gotta Wait” and the title track) before playing a dozen older tunes, almost all of which were hits. Hynde, like Nicks, has a distinctive voice, and it has held up well over the years. It’s worth noting, too, that “Gotta Wait” sounded as raw and urgent as any of the older songs. Maybe even more so.

The idea of a Nicks/Pretenders tour may not have made sense in 1980, when The Pretenders were lean, mean new-wave upstarts, and Fleetwood Mac was showing signs of superstar bloat with their “Tusk” album and tour. But somehow, it seems perfectly right in 2017, and when Nicks and Hynde sang together, on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” they seemed like kindred spirits, totally comfortable with each other.

Review Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders Live in Pittsburgh March 31, 2017

Concert review: Stevie Nicks, Pretenders set the gold standard in Pittsburgh
SCOTT MERVIS
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rebecca Droke/Post-Gazette

Wasn't Stevie Nicks one of the quiet ones in Fleetwood Mac?

She isn't now. All that stage banter saved up over the decades is spilling out on the 24 Karat Gold Tour, where she talks for 24 minutes between songs.

Ok, not really. I kid the diva (at my own peril!). It’s more like four minutes, and despite her bewitching image, she's not a diva at all, in the negative sense. We hesitate to apply the term “down to earth” to Stevie Nicks, because she seems to be hovering above it, but she's actually very sweet (I spoke with her on the phone years ago and she’s the kind of person who asks YOU questions about yourself).

This tour, which began in October and hit the PPG Paints Arena Friday on its second leg, is very much about her and how she came to be a star in and out of Fleetwood Mac. It's a “storytellers” tour without using that word, and on Friday night it was being filmed for posterity, giving it the feel of a live documentary in the making.

The odd thing about that is that usually people do the storyteller thing in an intimate theater setting, not a packed arena, here on a Girls’ Night Out Friday.

For starters, she brought along an old friend in Chrissie Hynde, the tough rocker from Akron, Ohio, fronting the latest version of the Pretenders, a band that emerged in the punk era of the late ‘70s as a counter-punch to the FM-friendly likes of Fleetwood Mac.

Clearly, the two Rock and Roll Hall of Famers love each other now, and Hynde even said “I love you, Stevie” after dedicating a beautiful version of the feminist ballad “Hymn to Her” to the headliner, along with all the rest of the songs in the set. The musical bond would jell even more later.

This concert was well placed on the calendar because over the last week Hynde has been canceling shows with a respiratory ailment, but in Pittsburgh (which she praised as a city that’s held on to its past) she seemed to be feeling no ill effects. The 65-year-old’s voice is still a wonder to behold — rich, sexy, forceful — and she cut a sharp figure in tight pants, boots and a sleeveless Recycled Records T-shirt. For this occasion, she settled on the nicer, mid-tempo Pretenders songs like “Back on the Chain Gang,” “Talk of the Town” and “Message of Love,” rather than such punk ragers as “Precious” and “The Wait.”

She actually seemed to care if Stevie’s fans liked her, and most did, but far too many were flooding in the aisles, just getting to their seats or getting up for beers, and with no real urgency.

Backed by one original Pretender in drummer Martin Chambers (Brits Pete Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott tragically died young) they added a pair of songs from new album “Alone” (including the bluesy, fuzzed-out title track) and finished with a solid run of “Stop Your Sobbing,” “My City Was Gone,” “Middle of the Road” and a typically sassy “Brass in Pocket.” Along the way, James Walbourne, of Pernice Brothers and Son Volt fame, provided the best guitar heroics of the whole night.

Stevie did not follow that by strutting out with one of her radio warhorses. She arrived in black lacy dress, cape and fingerless gloves, offset by her golden hair, on a gorgeously illuminated stage with deep cut “Gold and Braid,” setting the tone for a concert culled from what she described as the “dark Gothic trunk of lost songs.”

After following that with ‘80s synth-rocker “If Anyone Falls,” she said, “This is not the same Stevie Nicks show you’ve seen a million times, because I’m not the same Stevie Nicks you've seen a million times.”

In the good ways she is, though, because she is remarkably well preserved at 68, including that beguiling voice that can be at once lovely and dissonant.

The storyline centered on balancing her solo career with her day job in Fleetwood Mac. Being one of three singer-songwriters in that superstar band (with former flame Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie), there was, and is, the Beatles-like dilemma of getting your songs on the album.

When she decided in late 1980 to go solo with “Bella Donna,” “I wasn’t going to be like Beyoncé and break up my band,” she said, wisely appending that statement with praise and respect for the Queen. “I got Fleetwood Mac in a room and said, ‘Fleetwood Mac, I want to do a solo album, but it won't hurt us at all. It will only keep us in the spotlight while you're on vacation.’ ”

Providing some of the spark for that was Tom Petty handing her the smash single “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a contender for best rock duet of all time, and on the PPG stage, her sidekick guitarist Waddy Wachtel had to be pinching himself to be in a threesome with Stevie and Chrissie, singing, “I know you BOTH wanna be your own girl.” It was one of those thrilling concert moments you can talk about for years, punctuated with a high-five photo op at the end.

Nicks continued with trunk songs from 2014’s “24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault,” like the bright Petty-and-the-Heartbreakers-assisted rocker “Starshine” and the seductive “Belle Fleur,” interspersed with hits like “Gypsy,” ending with one of her signature spins that drive fans wild.

With each song came a long story, about recording with Fleetwood Mac in an old French castle with no ice, or calling Prince for help on “Stand Back,” a song inspired by hearing “Little Red Corvette.” It took an hour to get his number and, because he was in LA not Minneapolis, it took less than that for His Purple Majesty to show up at the studio and add keys and guitar to the future hit.

She climaxed the 2 1/2-hour set with an enchanting “Gold Dust Woman,” complete with a frantic dance in the full-moon backdrop, and an electrifying “Edge of Seventeen,” with the guitars rumbling like propellers and Nicks spreading her vintage black cape like a nightbird.

She encored with the double Mac pleasure of a “Rhiannon” that rocked and a “Landslide” that displayed her tender touch with a ballad. For the purposes of the film, they returned to recut “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with just Stevie and Waddy.

The 24 Karat format, and her occasional exits from the stage, surely interrupted the flow of the music (and there are bound to be complaints), but Stevie Nicks is still the gold standard, and her faithful fans got to know her a little better on Friday night.

In the end, she thanked them profusely for sitting through the stories and trunk songs, like the diva she is not.

STEVIE NICKS SET LIST

Gold and Braid
If Anyone Falls
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
Belle Fleur
Gypsy
Wild Heart
Bella Donna
Enchanted
New Orleans
Starshine
Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)
Stand Back
Crying in the Night
If You Were My Love
Gold Dust Woman
Edge of Seventeen
Encore:
Rhiannon
Landslide
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

Pittsburgh Photos[Link]